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Removing dead zone in steering


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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I can confirm this problem with Logitech G25.

 

It really makes no sense driving a car in this game with a wheel when your car only starts turning after you've already turned the wheel a lot. The "speed sensitive steering" is annoying as well, when you go faster the wheels no longer turn as much. Having these two issues fixed would make the driving in GTA4 with steering wheel be a lot more realistic.

 

Just having them as option would be all that we need.

 

[ ] Remove deadzone

[ ] Turn off speed sensitive steering

 

Basically what we want is to have the input that we give to the game with steering wheel to be realistically responsive in the game. I really really hope that this will be still fixed in a future patch, as how it is now I really can't enjoy this game, driving is such a big part of it.

 

Turning the steering radius to ridiculously low (117 degrees) is not really an option either. I'd like the car's wheels to turn instantly when I start turning the wheel, but still I want the turning radius to be realistic.

 

Please, Rockstar, find out what is causing the dead zone for PC gamers with steering wheel and put an option to remove it if at all possible. Otherwise this game is great, the idea behind it is great, just this thing is ruining the experience for nearly every PC gamer with steering wheel.

Lol, found out patch 3 actually supports my Logitech Formula Force EX wheel, steering and pedals. The deadzone is an issue, however it's not the only problem:

 

where can I add controls so I can use handbrake on the wheel? Without it, it really unplayable.

Okay POSSIBLE deadzone solution!

 

I don't give up easily, so spent a lot of time searching the net and found DXTweak2.exe on Logitech's site, an old program to calibrade direct input devices. So I did the following to remove the deadzone from my Formula Force EX wheel in GTAIV:

 

-Run DXTweak2.exe

-In the wheel axis menu, calibrate the steering wheel input to a narrow range, for no deadzone I use min 312, mid 512, max 712, APPLY and there you go: no deadzone!

-If you're already running GTA, turn off directinput in the game menu, ALT+TAB, set up the DXtweak values, APPLY, go back to GTAIV and turn directinput back on, now it's going to use the fresh settings.

 

Screenshot: http://i29.tinypic.com/301itg1.png

 

Now there's a price to pay: the rather narrow range means VERY high sensitivity, therefore you'll only use about 80 degrees overall to control. The wider range you set, the more deadzone you get, so feel free to set the value for your taste. This is not a final solution or anything, but for removing the deadzone on Logitech on XP, it works. I don't know about other wheels and systems, so it's up to you to find out. Oh one more thing: changing Logitech Profiler options overwrites DXTweak options, so I don't touch that program for now. Cheers!

 

The link, look for DXTweak2.exe:

http://www.wingmanteam.com/latest_software...#DX%20Tweak%202

 

 

 

 

PS., now here's my question to you:

 

There's a slight delay in reaction time between the wheel and the game obviously. Now in rFactor for example, I have no delay. I don't use other racing games. So... how do you get rid of the delay? Any oh yeah... anyone able to get Force Feedback with steering wheels?

Edited by -Bone-

Im sry Bone but that isnt a solution .... you can get even without your method 117° without a deadzone ... the problem is that if you want to use more degrees a deadzone appears ... rockstar need to implement something that gives us 900° wheel spin... with less than 400° its not fun to play with a wheel

Yeah, good thought Bone, but all your method is doing is minimising the deadzone in the same way as reducing total steering rotation.

 

What you are doing is making the wheel more sensitive by making the game think you are turning the wheel more than what you did on the actual controller. E.g. to turn the car fully left you don't have to turn the wheel fully left, just up to the value you selected. After that any further rotation of the wheel is ignored. As far as I can tell, this has exactly the same effect as reducing your total steering rotation (eg. 900 --> 270, or whatever), except maybe that the wheel doesn't lock once you turn past the game's total range.

 

It's all because the game seems to ignore the first x% (I think it's at least 20% from what I remember of testing it out) input of the total steering range of the wheel. The bigger the range, the bigger the deadzone because its a proportion of the total steering range.

 

That DXTweak2 could have solved the problem if it allowed a range of input to be reported as the centre. So instead of what you have done on the directinput over raw graph:

           ___

         /

        /

       /

___/

 

It becomes something like this:

 

      /

    /

   |

   |

  /

/

 

The height of the vertical part of the line would be adjusted to be equal to the deadzone --> no more deadzone. I wonder if anyone with a bit of skill working with drivers/directinput could make a little tweak? ... or rockstar could just give us a switch to turn the deadzone off rolleyes.gif ...

Yeah, it's up to R* or a modder to get rid of the game's deadzone. It shouldn't be complicated, but I'm sure the deadzone value is hidden somewhere deep inside the game engine. Anyways, I'm getting used to DXTweak method, I mean what else can u do?

 

So... does the slight delay in reaction time happening on your system too? barf8bd.gif

I haven't been able to use my wheel in gta at all since updating my logitech drivers (its now installed as a DFGT instead of a DFP, so no longer a gta supported wheel - not that I care, because of this deadzone problem). From what I remember of testing the wheel out I don't recall a delay in reaction time, but I was just focussing on the deadzone so might have missed it.

 

Are you sure its a delay and not a very small deadzone? - have you very very slowly turned the wheel from centre while watching the car's wheels? Is there a delay everywhere in the steering range, or is it just the middle?

 

Good that you're getting used to it. I couldn't smile.gif. I couldn't stand having such a narrow range, and even then I still notice a little annoying deadzone. It just didn't feel like using a steering wheel. So I went back to keyboard. Using pedals was cool though...

 

Are you sure its a delay and not a very small deadzone? - have you very very slowly turned the wheel from centre while watching the car's wheels? Is there a delay everywhere in the steering range, or is it just the middle?

No no, it's not the deadzone, it's a small but clear delay, and there's no delay in rFactor, that means it's either game or maybe software related, I don't know. Have you ever experienced delay in any game?

Oh ok, maybe I didn't notice when I was looking at the deadzone. The only game I use my wheel for at the moment is Richard Burns Rally, and I don't find any noticeable delay with that. Of course technically there has to be some delay/input lag, but it's way too small for me to notice.

 

Sorry I can't test it out - gta don't like my wheel no more...

 

Oh ok, maybe I didn't notice when I was looking at the deadzone. The only game I use my wheel for at the moment is Richard Burns Rally, and I don't find any noticeable delay with that. Of course technically there has to be some delay/input lag, but it's way too small for me to notice.

 

Sorry I can't test it out - gta don't like my wheel no more...

Anyway, thank you. I'll work something out.

 

EDIT: Okay, I think I sorted the delay out too. It seems delay can be caused by FPS / GPU performance issues (which is a big issue in GTAIV, lol), so it was recommended to use Ati Tray Tools and turn V-sync OFF and set 'Flip Queue Size' to 0, so the game can get wheel input faster. That'a what I did and it's now much better.

Edited by -Bone-
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

There's one thing to help, but doesn't solve the problem.. In Logitech Profiler, you can set steering sensitivity to 100%.

 

Even if the deadzone were eliminated there are 2 remaining issues.

1. Speed Sensitive steering lock, it's extremely noticeable in this game, as the speed increases, max steering lock decreases, there must be an option to turn that off.

2. Lesser issue, but this game has no force feedback for the steering.

  • 7 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

its the same topic.

 

Before posting I went through everything I could find.

 

It seams logitec steering wheels can be made to work but I want to get my CH flightstick to work for flying the choppers, without the deadzone. This xinput/only supporting a 360 pad/basically a 360 emulator thing is incrediably annoying. If I wanted to play with a 360 controller and xbox live I would save a lot of money and buy a xbox 360. Games for Windows Live is the worst thing to happen to pc gaming in my opinion.

 

Anyway, back to the subject. Anyone know any deadzone fixes?

 

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